Summary Of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

Most of Ehrenreich’s coworkers pay $500 or more for their rent. 5. When Ehrenreich goes for her job interviews, she gets disrespected most of the time because the employers she meets want their applicants to feel like they are lower class people. This happened to her in her interview for Merry Maids when her employer complains about finding decent help and telling her not to calculate her pay into hours. Ehrenreich never talks about an employer being nice, but in her low-wage work, she tries her best to prove herself, but she is still not treated with

Ehrenreich’s housing situation also makes her stand out from the real poor working class. Ehrenreich (2002) states "As it turns out, the mere fact of having a unit to myself makes me an aristocrat..." (p. 70). Almost every other person she has met has to live with another person. A hefty security deposit is required to get an apartment which many people are unable to pay so they are forced to live with family, friends, or pay for a hotel room. Cohabiting is another system the working poor faces. Ehrenreich does not have to endure the hardship of living with another person.

The situation Ehrenreich is describing is the reality of millions of Americans; they work multiple minimum wage jobs, and are paid “so meagerly that workers can’t save enough to move on.” In addition, Ehrenreich recalls the actions of the U.S. government in regards to assisting these Americans. The article opens with the contribution of President Lyndon B. Johnson on the “War on Poverty”, then the “attack on welfare” in the 90s, concluding with The Great Recession. While writing Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Ehrenreich abandoned her comfortable life to live the life of a low-income American; she worked multiple entry level jobs including Wal-Mart, a maid service, and as a nursing home aide. Through these actions, Ehrenreich establishes her ethos. Because she’s lived the lifestyle she’s describing, she has the authority to speak on the topic. Ehrenreich concludes with her proposal to help the

In Barbara Ehrenreich's bold and honest book she tackles the issue of poverty in America head on, by becoming a low wage worker herself. Ehrenreich delves into the often unheard of issues relating to poverty and low wage work, providing her readers with a new perspective on America's working poor and manages to give her audience a stark emotional, yet logical and factual, look into the working class' poverty epidemic. She uses her own anecdotal evidence and supports it with statistics and facts, appeals to ethos by challenging the ethics of corporate America and it costs, finally she hits an emotional chord with readers by reminding them of what low wage workers must endure so that we can live in our America.

In David K. Shipler’s book, The Working Poor Invisible in America the reader is provided a peek into the personal stories of the inner lives of eight families struggling inside the vicious cycle of poverty. Shipler’s method of interviews, narratives of personal stories and observation represents an innovative study investigating the working poor in an attempt to understand “how people in real communities devise collective responses to their problems (Segal, 2010).”

Barbara Ehrenreich 's showed that she didn't have the mind set or worries of a working class person by reminding us as readers the fine line between the kind of performance she is doing and the kind her fellow coworkers do every day on the job. Time and again she lets us sink into her new world of a low-wage worker, only to pull us back with a reminder of the act. 1 She does this experiment to determine whether or not she could both live off the money earned and have enough money at the end of the month to pay the next month's rent. Working class people depend on the money they make on these jobs to survive and provide for their families. She could drop all these jobs she experimented with and go back to her real life without a worry in the

When I purchased Nickel and Dimed earlier in the semester for the course, I read plenty of reviews saying that this was a must-read for everyone. I assumed that it would be a fairly informative book regarding the reality of poverty in America with bits and pieces of sad, disheartening testimonies thrown in along the way to reinforce our view of poverty; what I did not expect was the amount of honesty and humility that would come packed into those two hundred pages. Ehrenreich uses her experiences in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota to catch a glimpse into the lives of those living below the poverty line in America who struggle to make ends meet working

Unlike her other coworkers who desperately needed a job to get by. One of those coworkers was the single mother of two children who was named Colleen. After Ehrenreich had finished her time in Maine she had told Colleen who she really was and what she was doing going undercover. Ehrenreich begins to ask Colleen questions about what she thinks about poverty and those who have more than those who really need it to which she responds, “I don’t mind, really, because I guess I’m a simple person, and I don’t want what they have. I mean it’s nothing to me. But what I would like is to be able to take a day off now and then… if I had to.. And still be able to buy groceries the next day.” (p119) This reveals the importance of a simple maid’s job, it puts food on the table and helps sustain more than one person while Ehrenreich who lived alone and only had to support herself was able to go back home and not have to worry about keeping her short lived maid position. After leaving her occupation it is time to move on and go through the job process again. She had applied to Wal-mart where she had discussed what had to be done when finding a new job Ehrenreich states, “ Each potential new job requires (1) the application, (2) the interview, and (3) the drug test- which is something to ponder with gasoline running at nearly two dollars a gallon, not to mention what you may have to pay for a babysitter.” (pg135) Going back to search for a new job is a difficult task that may not

Most of Ehrenreich’s co-workers did not have a means of transportation other then public transportation, or their transportation was their place of residency. Most lived in flophouses, shared rooms, trailers, or hotel rooms. She also gave herself the luxury of being able to dip into her own money that was saved up from her “real” job. She makes a friend with one of her co-workers, Gail from the Hearthside, and at the end of chapter one, after she leaves her job, she gives Gail her keys to her apartment so she could move out of her flophouse that she pays $250 a week that she has been sharing with someone. Like she said she was not trying to recreate poverty, but just experience it. She would not let herself suffer by any means. She even went home to pick up cd’s and drink a bottle of wine after work.

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich tells a powerful and gritty story of daily survival. Her tale transcends the gap that exists between rich and poor and relays a powerful accounting of the dark corners that lie somewhere beyond the popular portrayal of American prosperity. Throughout this book the reader will be intimately introduced to the world of the “working poor”, a place unfamiliar to the vast majority of affluent and middle-class Americans. What makes this world particularly real is the fact that we have all come across the hard-working hotel maid, store associate, or restaurant waitress but we hardly ever think of what their actual lives are like? We regularly dismiss these people as

In the articles “Serving in Florida” by Barbara Ehrenreich and “On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eighner, both the authors focus on the idea about how everyone lives either above or below the poverty line. In the big idea of the poverty level situation, both Ehrenreich and Eighner have their different attitudes towards what their life is like. Ehrenreich focuses more on the bad or disappointing things that come with her job, while Eighner has a better attitude towards his “not so easy” lifestyle.

Throughout the book Ehrenreich’s co-workers all seem to struggle, such as the trouble with housing in Key West and healthcare in Maine. Having a place to live, eating properly, and healthcare seem to be the biggest cause of concern within the working class. Most of the jobs that she worked, the workers did not have healthcare packages or benefits. So it wasn’t uncommon for them to have trouble trying to manage their health and struggle to pay for medication, let alone a visit to the doctor. Without healthcare and a lack of proper diet (in Maine she had a ‘thirty minute’ lunch break but most of her co-workers barely ate anything close to a meal) it is not hard to see how the working class can easily be shot into poverty; seeing as most of the working class that she had encountered were just living above the poverty line. Reading about what she noticed and noted about her co-workers it isn’t hard to imagine how easy it would be to fall below the poverty

Barbara would have never discovered for herself how difficult balancing a low pay job and having no one to look after your child could be. Not to mention, I think that this scenario really opened Barbara’s eyes talking to someone in depth about having a low-wage lifestyle and what that is like. Question 7: Throughout the three chapters of “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich the theme of poverty is very evident. In Chapter one, Barbara is working Hearthside and talks to her coworker Joan about her living situation.

Barbara Ehrenreich is a best-selling author, who wrote the descriptive narrative essay titled, “Serving in Florida”. In this writing, Ehrenreich tells the readers about her experiment into seeing if it was truly possible to live off of minimum wage, in a low-wage community located in Florida. Ehrenreich initially published this writing in her novel called Nickled and Dimed, but since then, it has also been published in other books for students in school. In “Serving in Florida”, Ehrenreich finds a place to live for about $500 per month. While living there, she had a waitressing job, paying 2.13 per hour plus tips. Throughout the writing, Ehrenreich described the obstacles that made it almost impossible to live off of only minimum wage.

The main message that is shown throughout Ehrenreich’s investigation and what she was able to write in the book, shows the readers that it’s almost impossible to get by in America if you’re working below minimum wage. “ … with job entry-level jobs advertised at $8 an hour and studio apartments for $400 or less” ( Ehrenreich 122). This example from the book can show that in Minnesota, those prices are the ones being advertised, yet for low-wage workers living in a $400 apartment is not an option which is why Ehrenreich decides to live at a house that belongs to a friend’s friend and came with the agreement to take care of the owner’s cockatiel. This is also able to make an image of what people have to go through just have a roof over their heads